


Defining the relationship

by msmorland



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Didn't Know They Were Dating, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22337362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmorland/pseuds/msmorland
Summary: “Here,” Eames says, holding out the note. He watches Arthur’s face intently as he reads the piece of paper, on which Eames has written,Darling, I’ve been a complete idiot.“Signed and dated,” Eames says. “For your file on me.”
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 266





	Defining the relationship

**Author's Note:**

> I stumbled on the first page of this in my WIP folder yesterday—I think I began it as a bingo fic at some point and then switched to other prompts—and decided to finish it up. Usually I write Arthur as the oblivious one and Eames as the one who's been aware of his feelings all along, so this is a reversal of my headcanon for these two.

Ariadne is standing over him when Eames wakes up from his practice dream.

“What’s wrong?” are the first words out of Eames’s mouth—the team knows better than to disturb him when he’s practicing a forge, unless there’s a true emergency. 

“Nothing,” Ariadne assures him. “I just need to know where Arthur is.” 

She’s twisting her hands in front of her with nerves in a way Eames hasn’t seen since her first jobs. But the rest of their team members are busy around them with the usual work, so there’s no immediate danger. He guesses: architectural issue in the dreamscape that she’s afraid will make Arthur unhappy. Arthur, who is not the extractor and thus not the official leader of this job, but who is the unofficial leader all the same.

And, more to the point, who doesn’t share his comings and goings with Eames.

“Why should I know where Arthur is?” Eames asks her, genuinely confused, and then _she_ looks confused, and Eames considers going directly back to sleep.

“I thought—” she says. And then, “Never mind,” before she wheels abruptly and hurries back across the warehouse. She sits down again in front of her scale model of the dreamscape and is immediately immersed, as if the entire interlude had never happened, and Eames is still sitting here on the lounger, wondering what the bloody hell is going on. 

He checks again. He is awake. And Arthur is not in the warehouse, and hasn’t been since the night before, when he and Eames had exchanged harsher-than-usual words about what Arthur perceived as doing his job and Eames perceived as Arthur working himself into the ground.

“I wasn’t aware it was your business, Eames,” Arthur had said, stiffly, and walked out. 

Eames assumes Arthur is working off his sulk somewhere far away from Eames, as he usually does. That’s just how they are.

But if he hasn’t heard from Arthur by tonight, Eames decides, he’ll go look. 

Just for Ariadne’s sake.

* * *

Arthur doesn’t reappear in the warehouse at all that day, and Eames isn’t bothered by it, truly, but as soon as he wraps up for the day, he heads out in search of Arthur.

He’s surprised to find he has a mental list of places to look, places he’s been with Arthur just in the time they’ve been working out of this particular warehouse. Eames didn’t realize how much time they’ve spent together on this job, how many everyday jaunts they’d gone on for coffee and meal pickup and strolls when one or the other of them needed to get outside for a second. 

He finds Arthur sitting at the bar of a place they’d gone a week or so ago for lunch, just the two of them, everyone else busy with more urgent projects. 

“There you are, darling,” Eames says, mostly for lack of anything else to say, as he walks up to Arthur’s barstool.

“Ah,” Arthur says. “First he doesn’t want me to be working, then he comes to find me when I’m not.”

“It’s called _concern_ , pet. You haven’t been around all day. Ariadne was looking for you.”

“So you were worried about me? Or Ariadne had a question? Which was it?” Arthur turns his pint glass around and around on the bar, looking bored with an answer Eames hasn’t even given yet.

“Neither,” Eames says. “Both. Why can’t it be both? Friends are allowed to be concerned when one of them doesn’t show up to work on a workday.” _Especially_ , Eames thinks, _when one of them is a raging workaholic._

“Is that what we are, Eames?” Arthur says, looking up from his glass for the first time. “Friends?”

And Eames isn’t sure if it’s the bitterness in Arthur’s tone or the sharpness of his stare that stuns him, but Eames has no idea what to say.

* * *

Eames is still thinking about it hours later, after he’s gone back to the warehouse—where Arthur still doesn’t put in an appearance—and done an extra few hours of work to quiet his mind, after he’s settled in at his hotel with an evening cuppa and a book. Of course he and Arthur were friends, as much as anyone in an industry as secretive and competitive as dreamshare could be friends. They’d abandoned the pretense that they only worked together reluctantly; they called each other in on jobs regularly now because they valued each other’s skill. It was even obvious to their colleagues—why else would Ariadne have assumed Eames knew where Arthur was?

And beyond the work, Eames liked spending time with Arthur. He liked seeing that sharp mind turn over a problem until it found a solution. He liked watching the elegant, competent way Arthur moved through the world. He liked the flashes of humor Arthur occasionally let out and was always strangely flattered when he managed to be there to catch one. He liked grabbing coffee or lunch or dinner with Arthur, or tagging along on an errand and using the time to catch up on dreamshare gossip or talk through issues on the team. 

Eames has never had that kind of working relationship with someone else, one where he felt both parties had equal and balanced strengths, where they operated from a place of mutual respect, where Eames had a sounding board for decisions he normally had to make alone.

Take working out of it—Eames has never had that kind of _relationship_ with someone else, period.

And Eames had never before known Arthur to take anyone else’s advice during a job, or step out of whatever warehouse they were in for lunch or a walk, or share a problem when he hadn’t yet worked out a solution.

So. Maybe _friends_ isn’t, in fact, the word for it at all.

* * *

Eames has never had trouble sleeping normally. Even on a job, when what should be waking hours become dreaming ones and he’s oversaturated with sleep, he can get a full, restful, nearly dreamless eight hours at night with little trouble. But that night, Eames dreams continuously, and always of Arthur, in all kinds of scenarios Eames has never once contemplated while awake but that he supposes must have been lying in wait in his subconscious this whole time. They’re certainly fully formed.

And they’re very pleasant scenarios, Eames reflects when he wakes up the next morning. Scenarios he suspects—well, hopes—Arthur might be willing to help him enact if Eames can only find the right words with which to ask.

Eames scribbles a note for Arthur on a piece of hotel stationery, then sets out.

He begins his search at Arthur’s hotel because that’s where he most wants Arthur to be. Somewhere private. Somewhere—Eames tells his imagination to rein it in a little—with a bed. Somewhere where Arthur won’t have much to look at besides Eames, standing there in front of him.

It’s Eames’s lucky day. He steals a key card from the front desk so he can access the elevator, and when he knocks on his door, Arthur answers. Eames knows he’s got a gun behind his back—Eames would, too—and he can also tell from the way Arthur’s upper body relaxes when he sees Eames that he puts the gun down instantly. That’s something, Eames thinks. 

“You’re right,” Eames says. “We’re not friends.”

Arthur’s face does something complicated.

“Can I come in, Arthur?” Eames says. “Please.”

Arthur steps back, holds the door open. The room is sparse and neat, the opposite of every hotel room Eames occupies, which looks like a whirlwind has hit as soon as Eames so much as opens his suitcase.

“Here,” Eames says, holding out the note. He watches Arthur’s face intently as he reads the piece of paper, on which Eames has written, _Darling, I’ve been a complete idiot_.

“Signed and dated,” Eames says. “For your file on me.”

“What makes you think I have a file, Mr. Eames?”

“Well,” Eames says, “if you don’t, love, maybe this will be incentive enough to start one.” 

And he steps forward, toward Arthur, and kisses him.

“I’ve been a complete idiot,” Eames breathes, aloud, as soon as they pull apart. How long has he been missing that this was an option? And Eames considers himself a savvy judge of people.

“How so?” Arthur says. His mouth curves into one of his wicked smiles. “Your note was missing a few specifics. Perhaps you could enumerate them.”

 _Oh,_ Eames thinks, his brain making the next obvious, inevitable leap. _I love you_. “For once,” Eames says, “I’m completely in favor of specifics.” He uses Arthur’s tie to tug him toward the too-neat bed.

Eames has a great many things to enumerate.


End file.
